Time's Echo (49 page)

I am going to die. I realize it at last as my heavy skirts drag me down. I will never see Bess again. Never again will I rest my hand on her sleeping body to feel her
breathing, never again trace the miraculous curve of her cheek with my knuckle.

I said I would go back and read from the book. I didn’t know it would be the last time I saw her, the last time I tucked her hair back under her cap. I didn’t know this morning that
it would be the last time I ever woke up in the great bed with the red silk hangings that Ned had made for me. The last time I would push open the shutters and look up at the sky.

She will be waiting for me. Why did I go and see Agnes? What was I thinking of? Because of me, my daughter will be alone. Francis and Agnes will take her and defile her, and it is all my fault.
The anguish of it hurts more than the screaming pain in my ears, the agony in my lungs. I will die knowing that I have failed her, and as the water fills my throat, all I can do is try and beg her
forgiveness.

Bess . . .

I was swirling in the river, swirling in the pain and the grief, but when the current pushed me into a tree, I grabbed instinctively at the thrashing greenery, choking and
gagging on the taste of the river and rotten apples. I was out of my depth and my strength was ebbing. I couldn’t hold on for long. Already I could feel my fingers loosening, and I clamped
them back around the fragile branch.

‘Grace! Grace, take my hand!’

I could hardly see through the rain, but incredibly he was there, one arm anchored around a sturdy branch, the other reaching out to me.

‘Ned?’

‘Let go, Grace. The current will bring you towards me and I’ll catch you.’

Let go? I heard the words, but they didn’t make sense. I couldn’t let go. If I let go, the water would take me, the way it had taken Lucas, who had died because of me. I had let him
down, the way I had let Bess down. I deserved to drown.

‘Grace, look at me!’ He inched closer, and I blinked the rain from my eyes.

‘
Drew?
’

‘I’m here,’ he said calmly. ‘All you have to do is take my hand.’

‘I . . . can’t.’

‘You can,’ he said.

‘I
can’t
!’ I could barely speak. ‘I can’t. I’m afraid.’

‘I know you are,’ said Drew. ‘But I’m here. I’ll catch you. You have to let go first, though. I can’t reach you.’

The river was grabbing at me. It wanted me to let go too, so that it could devour me. It would drag me off and I would drown, the way I should have drowned when the wave crashed through the palm
trees that day.

I could see Drew edging closer. If he came any further he would have to let go of his branch and the river would take him too.

‘No!’ I cried desperately. ‘Sophie . . . ’

Sophie needs you, I meant to say, but Drew kept on coming. ‘Sophie’s safe,’ he shouted back over the water. ‘You found her. Now you can let go.’

‘Don’t come any closer!’ I shrieked. My fingers were numb, the leaves sliding out of my grasp.

‘I won’t, but that means you have to come to me,’ he said steadily. ‘Trust me, Grace. Let go, and I’ll catch you. It’s only a few inches. You’re almost
there.’

The river swirled and surged around me. The thought of letting go of my fragile hold was terrifying, but Drew’s voice was unwavering, and through the rain he beckoned, temptingly solid, on
the other side of a chasm of water.

Only a few inches, he had said, but it might as well have been a mile.

‘Trust me,’ he said again. ‘I won’t let you go.’

The leaves slithered through my hand and I flailed towards him. It felt as if I were launching myself out over the edge of an abyss, but it was only a few heart-stopping seconds before his hand
closed around my wrist and he was pulling me across the current, grabbing me with his other hand to yank me hard against him. I clung to him, spluttering, shivering, still babbling with terror, as
he gathered me into him and buried his face in my wet hair.

‘Grace . . . ’ His voice was choked with fear. ‘Jesus, Grace, I thought I was going to lose you.’

On the grass Sophie was wrapped in a blanket and was watching anxiously, a police officer by her side while two others waded through the water towards us. In the distance a cluster of blue
lights revolved through the rain, throwing a surreal glow over the scene.

In spite of the blessed solidity of Drew’s body, I could feel the river still sucking at me in frustration. I gulped a shuddering breath and groped for my pendant. The jade was my
touchstone. It anchored me to reality, let me believe I was safe. But my fingers scraped uselessly against my skin.

‘My pendant!’ Wildly I looked over my shoulder at the black water surging past, as if I might somehow be able to find the jade in its bitter depths. But there was nothing there,
unless –

I stiffened in the safety of Drew’s arms. Far out in the middle of the river I thought I had seen something. I thought I saw Hawise’s face, gleaming white and blue for a second as
she surfaced, but the next moment she was swallowed up, swept on into the darkness, and she had gone.

‘Sophie called the ambulance.’ Drew held me against him and rubbed his hand comfortingly up and down my arm. I was bone-tired, but I couldn’t sleep, and when
he slipped back into bed after checking on his daughter, I’d demanded that he tell me again what had happened. I’d been too shocked and confused earlier on to take any of it in.

‘How is she?’

‘Sleeping. They gave her a sedative at the hospital, but I think worse than the cold was the realization that her idol, Ash, could really leave her there.’

‘Did you talk to the police?’

He nodded. Lines of exhaustion were etched into his face. The evening had taken its toll on him too. ‘They said they would have a word with him, but Sophie went there voluntarily, and
there was nothing to keep her at the river. He’ll say it was her choice to stay there, which it was.’

‘He took her clothes away!’

‘Sophie said she took them off willingly. Apparently Ash told her that the initiation rite involved her offering herself naked to the river goddess, but she thought they would come back
for her after a few minutes. When they didn’t, she didn’t know what to do and hid under a bush. By the time you appeared, she was so cold and frightened she couldn’t move. She
said she thought she was imagining things at first, but you coaxed her out, and then she said a terrible look came over your face and you backed into the water. She said it looked as if someone was
dragging you, but there was no one else there.’

I swallowed. ‘That’s what it felt like.’

‘I’d heard your message by then and was already on my way. I’d been checking all evening, and of course the one time I switched my phone off for our discussions you’d
called. I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast,’ said Drew. ‘It wasn’t just the thought of Sophie. You were rambling about Francis and Agnes in your message, and when you
said you were heading for the river, I knew something was terribly wrong.

‘Sophie was hysterical when I got there, but she’d found your phone in the jeans and had called an ambulance, and they turned up with the police just after I did. You were out in the
current by then, and I saw you swept away—’ He stopped, swallowed. ‘I can’t tell you how I felt then. If you hadn’t been caught up in that willow . . . ’

His arm tightened around me and I turned into him, pressing my face against his throat. My hands were torn, my throat and stomach raw, and I was bruised and battered all over, but I was warm and
I was dry and I was clean. And I was with Drew.

‘I would have died,’ I said. ‘The way poor Lucy died. There was no one there for her.’ I shivered. ‘She had to go through that on her own.’

‘We don’t know that’s what happened to her,’ said Drew.

‘
I
know,’ I said. ‘I just can’t prove it. Hawise tried to live again through Lucy, just the way she did with me. It’s as if she’s driven to live her
life again and again, and every time she hopes she won’t make the same mistakes, but of course she always does.’

‘We can’t change the past,’ said Drew. ‘We can only accept it.’

I stroked the base of my throat. I was still getting used to the feel of it without my pendant. ‘Sometimes you can’t stop yourself wishing that you could go back and do things
differently. You think “If only I hadn’t”, or “If only I
had
”. You make a tiny choice – will I go on or will I go back? will I turn left or will I turn
right? – and the rest of your life turns on it.’

‘We can’t afford to think about the implications of every little choice we make,’ Drew said. ‘We’d never get out of bed in the morning. The possibilities are too
overwhelming. We’d be stuck, unable to move in any direction.’

‘That’s what I think has happened to Hawise,’ I said. ‘I think she’s desperate to live it over again, to do it differently. She wants to walk through that market
again and not smile at Francis. She wants to say no when he asks her to meet him. She wants to take Bess and Jane and Rob to London, instead of going to see Agnes. But she can’t. It’s
always the same story, and it always will be.’

I shook my head.

‘She’s gone for now, but she won’t rest. Maybe it won’t be me next time, but she’ll try and live her story again through someone else. I think Lucy’s
experiments gave Hawise a connection to the present, and now she won’t stop until she can forgive herself for abandoning Bess.’

‘She didn’t abandon her. From what you’ve told me, there was nothing she could do.’

‘But that’s the whole point. She’s tortured by the idea that she could have done something and, because she didn’t, her daughter suffered. How do you come to terms with
failing your own child?’

‘When you’re a parent you have to face that possibility all the time,’ said Drew. ‘Is it my fault that Sophie fell for the pseudo-religious nonsense Ash
spouted?’

‘No . . . At least, don’t you feel a bit responsible?’

‘Grace, I didn’t force Sophie out there tonight. All we can do as adults is give our children the tools to make their own decisions. I can’t control Sophie. She’s not a
little girl that I can pick up and hold safe any more. I wish she were!’ he said. ‘I’ve made lots of mistakes, and I’ll go on making them, but all we can do is our
best.’

I said nothing. Drew pulled me deliberately round to face him. ‘None of us can do any more than try our best,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault Lucas died in the tsunami,
Grace. It was a tragedy, but it wasn’t your responsibility. You did your best. You tried to hold onto him, but you couldn’t. You have to forgive yourself for that now.’

I couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I can’t,’ I managed.

‘That’s what you said in the river,’ he reminded me. ‘But you
could
. You saved yourself, Grace. Let go,’ he said, just as he had when the current dragged
and pummelled me.

My chest constricted as the dread and the guilt surged back, suffocating me. I couldn’t breathe, lying so close to Drew, and I rolled away from him to suck in some air.

Ignoring my protests, Drew pulled me firmly back against him. ‘Let go,’ he said again and, just like that, something inside me unlocked and it all came spewing out. I wept and I
wept, howling out the grief and the guilt I had dreaded for so long, and it felt just as bad as I had thought it would.

Drew didn’t say anything. He just held me, and when it was over, I tested my raw emotions. I felt empty and ravaged, but Drew was still there. The guilt and the grief were still there too,
but I wasn’t as afraid of them now as I had been before. I had come apart, but now I knew I could put myself back together again.

I put my arm over Drew and laid my cheek against his chest, listening to the slow, steady beat of his heart. He was almost asleep, I could tell. ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, and he
stirred, rubbing a hand over his face as he yawned.

‘Do you want to go back to your own bed now?’ he asked, but I pressed closer into him.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here.’

Drew dropped his battered briefcase on the breakfast bar and kissed the side of my neck as I stood at the cooker.

‘I found something interesting when I was looking at probate inventories yesterday,’ he said.

His research leave was over, and he spent two nights every week in London, teaching and lecturing. When he had the time he worked on his book, poking around in the archives for evidence of
neighbourliness. Quite how that had taken him to wills and probate inventories I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to think it was useful. He was always coming home with little bits of information
that he’d found interesting, so I didn’t take much notice at first.

‘Oh?’ I blew on a spoonful of the sauce I was making and tested it. It needed more salt.

‘I think I found Bess.’

The wooden spoon clattered into the pan. ‘
Bess?
’

Nearly a year had passed since that terrible night by the river.

I had had my ticket booked, so I went to Mexico as planned, and I had a good time with Mel, but I came back. I missed Drew. He sold his house in the Groves and we bought one together on the
other side of the city. I got my old job back teaching English as a foreign language. It wasn’t always easy, but I was learning to talk about what I felt, instead of booking myself on the
first plane out of the country.

Sophie drifted in and out as it suited her. She never again mentioned Ash or the Temple of the Waters. Instead she put her hair in dreadlocks, became a vegan and joined an animal-rights group.
It made mealtimes a bit of a challenge when she was staying, and Drew grumbled about the number of nut roasts that he had to eat, but otherwise he was just glad to have her there.

We didn’t talk about that night much. As far as Sophie was concerned, it was something to be forgotten, and for Drew too, I thought, it was over. I pretended it was for me as well, but I
knew that it wasn’t, not completely. I never slipped back into Hawise’s life again, but every now and then I would catch the smell of rotting apples, or Bess’s name like a sigh in
the air.

Now I wiped my hands on a tea towel. ‘What about Bess?’ I demanded. All at once my heart was pounding.